Fiona Website Going Offline

Once you migrate your website from Fiona to FirstSpirit, the Fiona site is taken offline. Here's what that specifically means.

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A Fiona Website Goes Offline

A website in Fiona usually goes offline when the new website in FirstSpirit goes online. For more information, see Milestone 6: Go Live.

Offline procedure

  • A website in Fiona is taken offline. This means that it is made inaccessible to the global public on the www.
    • In Fiona itself, the website can still be accessed in read-only mode. This gives editors the opportunity to check whether individual content still needs to be moved or old data archived.
    • The previous URLs used to access the pages will then lead to a dead end (404 error). We therefore recommend that you commission us to set up redirects for the most important URLs, which will lead to the new equivalents of the pages.
  • A few weeks after going offline, please notify us of the specific Fiona project (including the Fiona project name) that you now want to permanently delete from Fiona.

Special case: Relaunch as a subpage of an existing website

As part of a consolidation process, your previously independent Fiona website will be integrated as a subpage into an existing website (e.g., faculty page or under LMU.de). Depending on the status of the main website, there are two possible scenarios:

1. Main appearance is not yet online

Your subpage will go online together with the main website. Please coordinate with the project administration to ensure that your old Fiona website is taken offline at the same time.
Tip: Include the Fiona website in the go-live request for the main website.

2. Main appearance is already online

You can put your subpage online yourself at any time. However, the offline status of the Fiona website must be coordinated with Department VI.5. As a rule, offline status can be granted within 4-6 weeks of the request. If you would like a specific change date, please indicate this in your request.

Can I keep the URL of my old Fiona website?

LMU adopts an adapted domain concept when transitioning to FirstSpirit, which means your URL may change. However, through redirects and possibly short URLs, your users can still find your website.

For websites that are operated independently from Fiona or FirstSpirit by individual units, the domain guidelines of the LMU Hostmaster apply.

Can only part of the website be migrated?

No. The entire website goes offline. It is important that you ensure all content that is still relevant is migrated to the new website.

How can I create a backup of the old Fiona website?

If you’d like to back up your live Fiona pages before they go offline, you can do this yourself, since the pages are static:

  • Choose a date and time—before the offline phase—to create the backup.
  • Visit the live pages of your website in your browser.
  • Use a standard tool such as HTTrack, Wget, or browser plugins like Web Scraper or SingleFile to download a complete backup.
  • Make sure your backup storage complies with any applicable legal retention requirements.

Can I keep old short URLs, or will they be changed?

If you had a short URL set up with the LMU hostmaster for your previous Fiona site, it can be transferred during the go-live phase.

Example:

Your old Fiona URL was:
www.meinelehrstuhl.meinefakultaet.uni-muenchen.de/forschung/konferenz/unserekonferenz2025
and you had a short URL set up for it, e.g.:
www.lmu.de/unserekonferenz2025

After go-live, the short URL would no longer work because the original target URL no longer exists in that form.

The new target page the short URL should point to might be, for example: www.meinefakultaet.lmu.de/meinlehstuhl/forschung/unserekonferenz2025

Thus, the destination of the short URL must be updated at the go-live appointment. You can inform us of this when requesting a go-live date.

When do the old Fiona pages disappear from search and search engines?

Fiona pages that have been taken offline are no longer available on the web. If someone tries to access them and no redirect has been set up, a 404 error will appear.

However, it may take some time before they are removed from all search engines—especially if the old URLs are still linked somewhere.

The built-in search on LMU pages is configured to include only FirstSpirit sites. However, since that search relies on Google, it's possible that old Fiona sites might still be found for a while.